Defence expenditure is the premium paid to insure against the failure of foreign policy
A good defence strategy is one that manages the risks of foreign policy going wrong for one reason or the other. It might turn out that foreign policy was based on the wrong presumptions, or unexpected events might upset the geopolitical balance [...]
Did the Ayatollah qualify for a PIO card?
From Hooman Majd’s excellent The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran:
Some secular Persian intellectuals … reserve a special hatred for Ayatollah Khomeini, not just because he founded the Islamic Republic, but because to them he wasn’t even Persian. Since his paternal grandfather was an India [...]
General Kayani’s moves suggest that he sees the final lap
President Barack Obama gave his Af-Pak speech at West Point on December 1st, 2009 where he announced his intention “to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.” General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani signaled his policy by the end that month when [...]
Guns are necessary
The attack on Indian officials in Kabul on February 26th was no ordinary one—it was almost certainly an operation ordered by the ISI and carried out by one or the other of its errand boys. If the ‘taliban’ wanted to merely attack Indian nationals they could have picked any of the hundreds of [...]
Pragati—The Indian National Interest Review is three.
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Getting Saudi Arabia to take responsibility for Pakistan’s actions is in India’s interests
At a recent conference in Abu Dhabi on emerging powers and the Middle East, one of the arguments I made was that a stable Afghanistan requires a balance of two distinct sets of powers—India-Iran-Russia on the one hand, and China-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia on the [...]
The mutual popularity of India and United States
Results from Gallup’s latest Country Favourability poll (linkthanks Rohit Pradhan) show that India continues to be among the most popular countries in the United States. There’s been a slight decline in percentage of respondents who rated India positively—from 69% in 2008 to 66% in 2010—but this is part [...]
Talks will call the bluffs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad & Washington
The sudden and unexplained manner in which the UPA government offered to resume talks with Pakistan has injected a lot of confusion in the public discourse. The confusion—and the political & strategic costs arising from it—must be blamed on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A move as [...]
Understanding the Saudi Arabian position on sanctions on Iran
Just what did the Saudi foreign minister mean when he refused to back international sanctions on Iran “because we are closer to the threat (and therefore an ) need immediate resolution rather than gradual resolution”? Riyadh’s position is surprising not least because, as it transpired at a [...]
Why a lamb was sacrificed
The New York Times, which broke the story of the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, supposedly second only to Mullah Mohammed Omar in the Taliban firmament, says that it was the result of a joint US-Pakistani operation in Karachi last week. The news was kept secret in order to [...]
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